Back Issues

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Established 1979
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These are the back issues of Red Rag. They'll be posted here every (usually) two weeks on or around the anniversary of their original publication. We're currently reissuing 1984; the latest issue is dated February 19th (scan / txt); the next one is due out on March 4th.

Red Rag, or Reading's only newspaper, had a noble tradition of misspelling, mixed metaphors, wrong facts, confused political judgements and a print run by now of 1300. It printed pretty well everything it got sent ("unless the Collective judged it racist, sexist, right wing, or supportive of oppressive religions"). It aimed to provide a decent alternative coverage of local news and issues from a radical non-aligned position; to promote subversive and creative initiatives; to provide a forum for unorthodox views; to allow some sort of co-existence between a huge variety of interests. And in over four years it had never sold a single copy.

In this issue (scan / txt): Cruise missiles will be moved in massive convoys to launch sites covertly surveyed in peacetime; they'll use good A roads and motorways, kept closed to the rest of us in a "state of emergency" by armed soldiers. The Greenham Women and CND plan a day of actions to publicise this and for half a glorious Wednesday morning one of the gasworks at Kennetmouth bears on high a slogan which agrees with them. Two independent studies say that Readibus is the most efficient disabled peoples dial-a-ride in Europe; the Council's Transportation Committee brands the service as inefficient and so cuts its budget by 10%. The Knockabout Comics trial is set for May 8th when they'll face 15 charges of Obscene Publications and two of conspiring to contravene the Misuse of Drugs Act; Reading Squatter's Collective has a solution to the poverty cycle caused by extortionate rents; and the Centre For Liberated Sexuality proposes abstention as an answer to oppressive relationships and plans a squat of its own.